With better roads, inns and coaches, the eighteenth century saw travel change from an uncomfortable necessity to a pleasure. While grand tourists flocked to the centres of European history, the new love of the sublime sent Britons also to the wilds of their own island. Contemporary accounts of such travels, which were a popular form of pleasurable instruction, make also fascinating reading for us, because they open a window on eighteenth-century culture. In class we will discuss travel writings by Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, William Beckford and Ann Radcliffe. This will entail a consideration of the various forms and conditions of travelling, the types and functions of travel writing, textual strategies, shifting concerns and aesthetic values as well as the role of stereotyping in fostering a sense of cultural/national identity.
A reader will be made available via Moodle.
Assessment/requirements: Übung: test at the end of term; Seminar: 12-page research paper
- Kursleiter/in: Uwe Klawitter